


10 of Wands

by a_good_soldier



Series: s13 codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (I love that that's a tag), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Coping, Episode: s13e09 The Bad Place, Family, Gen, Season/Series 13, Survival, Winchester Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 10:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: Sometimes Dean’s just gotta laugh when he thinks about how ridiculous his life is. It was easy when it came to death — with Sam looking terrified and angry in the passenger seat, Dean had laughed his goddamn ass off at the thought of Billie sending him back because he’s important. Somehow the incessant cycle of resurrection had become hilarious in that single moment. “Dead, not dead, who gives a crap, right, Sam?” he’d asked on the way home, and Sam had shook his head mutely, looking out the window.Now, though, it’s hard to laugh when he’s still going through it. A one-time injection is an easy thing to shake off; the daily grind of constant adrenaline-intense survival instinct that brings back the muscle memory of Purgatory, less so.Also, Dean’s in withdrawal.





	10 of Wands

**Author's Note:**

> I don't understand what's happening in this show & I'm honestly ok with that.
> 
> Title is referencing the tarot card. The ten of wands is sometimes seen as a card which represents struggling with a too-heavy burden. Note: my tarot knowledge comes from wikipedia.
> 
> Heed the tags. It's not a very heavy fic, but warnings beyond the tags include: non-graphic description of vomiting, discussion of suicide with intent to follow through (for Winchester-esque plot reasons, which makes it somewhat less concerning, although the implications of this suicidal impulse are explored in the fic).

So they’re in dino land now.

Sometimes Dean’s just gotta laugh when he thinks about how ridiculous his life is. It was easy when it came to death — with Sam looking terrified and angry in the passenger seat, Dean had laughed his goddamn ass off at the thought of Billie sending him back because he’s important. Somehow the incessant cycle of resurrection had become hilarious in that single moment. “Dead, not dead, who gives a crap, right, Sam?” he’d asked on the way home, and Sam had shook his head mutely, looking out the window.

Now, though, it’s hard to laugh when he’s still going through it. A one-time injection is an easy thing to shake off; the daily grind of constant adrenaline-intense survival instinct that brings back the muscle memory of Purgatory, less so.

Also, Dean’s in withdrawal.

“I thought you were laying off the booze,” Sam comments mildly, keeping a lookout as Dean shudders his way through puking his guts out. “I mean, God knows I’m the last person to judge—”

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Dean croaks. He wipes his mouth off on his sleeve, and tries to think about standing up. He thinks about it for a good amount of time, too. Long enough that he’s actually starting to consider doing it.

“We gotta keep moving,” says Sam, as though he knows the conditions, knows this place. Right. Dean’s the one who’s got a year in monster heaven under his belt, and besides, he just has to get through the next twenty-four hours and he’ll be fine. Back in Purgatory it’d taken him nearly two weeks — Dean guesses, time got a little fuzzy there the way it’s starting to get fuzzy here, after what Dean assumes has been only six, seven hours? — to get fully back on his feet, he’d been drinking so much back on Earth.

Dean swallows his pride, and his bile, and takes the hand Sam gives him to help him up. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbles. “That was gross.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just leads them to what must be a safer-looking group of trees, navigating through the semi-truck-sized footprints. Good thing he knows where he’s going, because Dean can barely see through the vomit-induced tears.

“I was thinking,” Sam starts, because he can’t keep his mouth shut, “wouldn’t you not have time to get re-addicted to alcohol after your last death?”

“What,” Dean grunts, because he’s either not drunk enough or not sober enough to parse through that mess. 

Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder, and points Dean to a rock, which he sits on gratefully. “I mean, when we die, we gotta— like, we come back clean, y’know? Least that’s what I’m assuming, since we can still function even though we damn well shouldn’t be able to after the hits we’ve taken.”

Dean kneads his forehead while he thinks that over. “Makes sense,” he says eventually. He sucks in a breath. “Like when Cas raised me from Hell. I didn’t have a single scar left, an’ I didn’t have that sore rib from that werewolf back in… I dunno, just before you left.” Left for Stanford, he doesn’t say, because for all their comings and goings, that’s still the only important one.

Sam huffs out a laugh. “That was one of the last few things that made me finally realize I had to get out for good. Jesus, you were covered in blood, and Dad wouldn’t let us go to a hospital.”

“He had his reasons,” Dean snaps instinctively, and then sighs. The man’s dead and gone, and Dean still can’t stop fighting his battles for him.

Sam lets it go, though, and Dean’s damn grateful for it. He breathes in deep, and out. At least here in the middle of a freaking Jurassic Park alternate universe, the air’s crisp and clean, super-oxygenated. Makes his headache recede just a bit.

“Anyway,” Sam says eventually, “why do you think it didn’t clear you out this time?”

“I dunno,” Dean says. He does have to admit that his liver felt brand new after Cas raised him, too, so it’s not like alcoholism is somehow exempt from the full body resurrection cleanse. “Maybe it’s ‘cause it wasn’t, like, a real death.”

“Dean, you were a hundred percent dead. For two minutes.” Dean can see well enough to notice Sam’s shoulders shake, for a second, before he leans against a tree casually. He clears his throat. “Seemed pretty real to me.”

Dean shrugs. “I dunno, man. I guess, like… I mean, Billie had this whole set up, like, a bunch of notebooks, hundreds of ‘em, and each of them was one way I’m supposed to die. And that wasn’t one of them. So maybe it doesn’t really count.”

“Huh.” Sam’s quiet for a while, so quiet Dean keeps his eye on him just in case he collapses or something.

They listen to the trees for a while. There’s a massive groaning sound in the distance, and what sounds like a crash, on some prehistoric mega-dino scale. It takes a full minute for them to hear birds — or something like them, anyway — rustling through the trees, and then flying overhead, probably away from whatever just caused the crash and the light earthquake that’s now rumbling beneath their feet. It stops after another minute, and the forest goes quiet again.

“We are in way above our heads,” Sam says. “Like, way, way above. At this scale, our heads don’t even exist.”

Dean mumbles his agreement. Another wave of nausea hits him, and he leans forward with his head between his knees, trying to ride it out without puking again.

“You okay?” Sam asks quietly once Dean feels good enough to lift his head again. Dean nods, and Sam shoves him over on the rock to sit next to him. They can barely fit the two of them, but Dean’s not about to complain. He does kinda wish they had some beers to share.

It’s quiet. Too quiet. Dean tries to make his eyes focus better, just in case something comes to attack them. They hit a run of freakin’ orcs or something a ways back, but since then they haven’t come across anything or anyone trying to hurt them, except by accidentally trampling them.

“Do you think all the notebooks are written in English?” Sam asks.

“What? What— oh, Billie’s notebooks.” Dean snorts. “How the hell should I know? I didn’t read any of ‘em.”

“Hmm.” Sam taps his fingers against his knee, and says, “How were they organized?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Man, is this what we need to be talking about right now?”

“You got any better way to pass the time?” Sam asks, and Dean doesn’t, and he wants to stop thinking about the fact that he’s really goddamn hungry, so he’s gotta give him that one. After a pause, Sam adds, “Well there you go.”

“Fine.” Dean tries to rack his memory. “It was — like, a giant bookshelf, with a W on it. Like a library, basically, except I guess organized by last name.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sam says. “What about people whose names aren’t written in English characters? Or people who died before written language?”

“I dunno, why don’t you ask Billie? Oh wait, we can’t, because we’re not even in the _same goddamn universe_.”

Dean freezes. Sam freezes. “What? What’s wrong?”

“No, that’s not— Sam. _Sam_.” Dean can’t believe it’s taken him this long to think of it. “Billie can see the whole multiverse, she told me.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“If one of us dies—”

“God _damn_ it, you asshole—”

“—she’ll have to talk to us, ‘cause she’ll reap us! And she’ll help us get outta here! She said we’re important!”

Sam closes his eyes and sighs. “Dean. Neither of us is dying.”

“I bet _this_ isn’t written in any of her stupid notebooks,” Dean says. “So she’s gotta send us back again after.”

“That doesn’t— that’s a terrible bet, first of all, and secondly, _no_. No. Absolutely not.” Sam’s clenching his fist against his thigh, and it looks like he’s trying to stop his hands from shaking except it’s not working because his whole leg is shaking, but it doesn’t matter, because Dean’s going to get them out of here and into that other universe so they can save Mom.

“We’ll save Mom,” Dean says, “it’ll be— it’ll work, it’s gotta work—”

“Dean, calm down,” and Sam actually puts a hand on him, Sam puts his hand on Dean’s forearm, but it doesn’t help, it can’t help. Dean’s beyond human contact. He doesn’t even feel the withdrawal anymore. “Dean, you gotta—”

“I’m not gonna mess it up.” Dean looks around, gets up off the rock and doesn’t pay attention to Sam following him around the copse they’ve been hiding in for the past thirty minutes. “I just— I just need— maybe suffocation is the best option, then it’s not like my body’s damaged, you know?” He turns around. “Sam, if you just hold your hand over my mouth—”

“Listen to yourself!” Sam grips his biceps and Dean’s forced to stop and look at his face, to look at tears he hadn’t noticed. “Dean, Jesus Christ, do you _hear_ yourself?”

Dean looks at him, and then he’s gotta shift his eyes away, instantly miles down from his high. He was up in the clouds, and now he’s at rock bottom, further, he’s in the damn magma core of the Earth. Dean can recognize that these mood swings aren’t his normal, and they aren’t even part of his normal withdrawal symptoms. What the hell is wrong with him? “Whatever,” he says, and shakes off Sam’s arms before Sam can notice that he’s shivering. “We don’t have to do it.”

“You just asked me to kill you,” Sam chokes out. “You just asked me to kill you. You just—” He stops, but his mouth stays open, like he’s gonna say it again. It repeats in Dean’s mind. You just asked me to kill you. Is this what they are now?

“I’m just trying to get us back,” Dean says, trying to find his way back to some kind of equilibrium. He realizes he’s sweating. “If you got any better ideas, let me know.”

“I don’t. I don’t have any ideas at all, but Jesus, Dean, anything’s better than that. I’m not— I’m not holding my hand over—” Sam takes a deep breath in.

Dean sits back down on the rock. Now that he doesn’t have the good kind of adrenaline racing through his system, he feels beat. At least he’s too tired to puke, although the headache he had is even worse now.

Sam paces around for a bit, and Dean can see the tension leaking out of his shoulders as he starts to believe that Dean won’t try to off himself the first chance he gets. There’s something inside Dean that’s itching to get out, but it settles after a few minutes. Finally, Sam gets back on the rock with Dean. Dean doesn’t flinch when Sam puts his hand on the back of his neck; he just sinks into the grounding pressure.

“I need you to—” Sam starts, and then shakes his head. “I just— I need you, Dean.”

“I get that,” Dean mumbles, because he’s feeling pretty shamefaced about the whole thing now. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him.

“You scared me there,” Sam adds. Dean can’t say anything to that at all. He scared himself, a little bit, because now he doesn’t want to die, not really. Mom’s alive. Cas is alive. There’s no reason to throw himself on his own sword, not like there was back in that haunted house. Eventually Sam says, “Dean, we’re not gonna get outta here if we think like that, okay? We need to stay alive.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Because you seemed really ready to kill yourself for a second there.”

“I was—” He was excited. He was excited about getting something right for once in his nightmare of a life, and no matter how much he wanted to stay alive to see it, it seemed better to risk permanent death than to abandon the idea entirely. “I can’t explain it.”

“I know you want to save Mom. I do, too, okay?”

Mom. She’s a— a trigger, that’s what she is, the thought of her triggers the memory of a house fire, the memory of bone-deep shame that came from Dad bringing her up whenever Dean screwed up as a kid, the memory of being not good enough to raise Sam right. To protect him. The memory of not being good enough to protect himself. “Yeah,” Dean manages to get out, “yeah, I— I hear you, Sam.”

“We’ll get outta here. We’ll find another way, Dean, we always do.”

Now they’re getting into the kinda cheesy morale-building territory Dean always hates with Sam, so he snorts. “Yeah, I get it, bucko. No need to lay it on.”

“You just asked me to hold my hand over your mouth and suffocate you while you were in a manic high, Dean. Pretty sure I get full sap immunity for at least the next month.”

Huh. Dean nods. That’s pretty reasonable.

“We gotta keep moving,” Sam says after a moment, and Dean nods. He blinks away the fuzziness in his eyes, and takes the hand Sam offers him again, even though he could probably stand up on his own. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Dean replies. They have to. At the very least so Dean can get himself a goddamn drink.


End file.
